We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than the pleasure of lifting heavy loads, and a paycheck.

We'll spend most if not all of our free time handling cranes and other construction machinery all to move a few containers, or help in a construction project.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same loads over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such crane operating nirvana that they can literally control these things blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many buildings have been smashed, crane engines over heated, construction sites destroyed in frustration? All to later be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our cranes? We're already getting a new one without them. They take our licence? Crane operators aren't shy about working illegally, or even faking a license our selves. They think calling us fat, uneducated, failures is going to change us? We've been called worse things by managers in business suits with shitty hard hats. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big co-workers and bosses laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Crane operators are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another heavy load.